Best album of all times – Number 14: Mötley Crüe – Shout at the Devil

Nikki Sixx (Frank Ferrana), Vince Neil (Vince Neil Warton), Mick Mars (Robert Allen Bippus) and Tomme Lee (Tomme Lee Bass) may be the band that have lived the rock’n roll life to its absolute maximum. Success, fame, glam, women and party on one hand. Drugs, jail, trash, crash, burn and even dead band members. Nikki Six was in an academic way dead for two minutes before found by Slash in his hotel room 1987, and the injected with adrenalin in the heart and survived. This was actually the background for the track “Kickstart my heart” on the Dr Feelgood album.

Back to the album. This is after all a “Best album of all times”-list. Shout at Devil was released in 1983 and was Mötley Crües biggest hit at the time. The sound, with its roots in Blues, and old school rock n’ roll, played on speed became part of the beginning of a new era in the hard rock / heavy metal scene; Glam rock.

Many parents in Sweden were really afraid of Mötley Crüe and other bands at the time (especially W.A.S.P), and even Swedish Television arranged a talk show around this matter (Swedish), and even though Nikki Sixx tried his best to explain the lyrics in a more down to earth way, the parents hated the album, which always is a good reason for the teenagers to do the opposite. “What a crock of shit! There was nothing demonic about Shout at the Devil. All we were saying was that everyone should stand up and shout at those people who are holding them down, whether it’s their parents, their teachers, or their bosses.” Nikki Sixx (source: nikkisixx.tv).

The highlights on the record, except for the title track is, in my mind “Looks that kill”, “Helter Skelter” (Beatles Cover) and “Too young to fall in love”.

I really like the full sound of Mötley Crüe at this stage in their career, with the crisp guitar, the always amazing drums, Nikki Sixx (as the most frequent writer of the tracks) bass lines and of course the falsetto voice of Vince Neil.

Some other facts:

Nikki Six played with Slash and Izzy Stradlin (later part of Gun’s n Roses) before forming Mötley Crüe

Vince Neil appeared in the MTV-show “The remake of Vince Neil” which was aimed at getting Vince Neil back in form after years of food abuse